Rubio Seduces Europe With Imperial Nostalgia

Jomo Kwame Sundaram , Kuhaneetha Bai Kalaicelvan | 13 Mar 2026

Marco Rubio’s speech last month in Munich obscured Western imperialism’s dispossession, exploitation and slaughter of indigenous peoples worldwide, especially in Global South.

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Munich speech last month seemed to seduce the European elite behind President Donald Trump, against the ‘Rest’, especially the resource-rich Global South.

New international order?

Recognising the deliberate ‘wrecking-ball’ demolition of the post-1945 world order, February’s 62nd Munich Security Conference theme was ‘Under Destruction’.

Billed as the world’s leading forum for international security, the conference programme made clear whose interests and security were prioritised.

In its first year, Trump 2.0 bombed ten nations, besides threatening aggression against four other Latin American nations, but none were represented at Munich!

The Munich conference shed all pretence of objectivity and diplomacy on Iran, applauding Israeli-led military intervention to overthrow the Islamic Republic.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz emphasised the world’s return to great power competition after the post-Cold War ‘unipolar moment’, making his loyalty clear.

At Davos in January, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney noted that Trump 2.0’s geopolitical “rupture” had forced many to abandon earlier illusions.

Dangerous new trends have been emerging, hardly any ‘order’. Trump insists US supremacy must be even more dominant, isolating rather than confronting rivals.

In January 2026, the US withdrew from dozens of mainly multilateral organisations. Old rules, even those revised during his first term, are out, alarming many accustomed to them.

Trump’s predecessors’ ‘rules-based order’ had offered a legal and diplomatic fig leaf to subordinate other states to US supremacy.

Now, Washington repudiates the very framework it demanded others accept, instead of the ostensibly universal but sometimes inconvenient ‘rule of law’.

Instead of diplomatic and commercial negotiations, economic and military threats prevail. Without velvet gloves of soft power, the mailed fists of military force and economic weaponry are exposed.

Reuniting the West

Rubio welcomed this “new era in geopolitics”, urging better transatlantic relations while reiterating Trump 2.0’s demands for Europe to pay more, albeit more gently.

After the end of the Cold War, Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations urged defending the ‘Judaeo-Christian’ West against the ‘Rest’, including Catholic Latin America.

In Munich, Cuban-American Rubio reinvented himself as a White Christian European, warning his European audience that the West is under threat.

For Rubio, “the West had been expanding” to “settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe” over the last five centuries.

His history obscured Western imperialism’s dispossession, exploitation and slaughter of indigenous peoples worldwide, especially in the Global South.

Praising the superiority of European civilisation and values, he lamented setbacks to these “great Western empires” due to “godless communist” and “anti-colonial” uprisings after the Second World War.

Rather than progress inspired by the 1776 US Declaration and War of Independence, for Rubio, national self-determination was a civilisational setback.

“We in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline”. For Rubio, no more ‘liberal’ human rights, freedom and democracy rhetoric.

He did not hesitate to invoke racist, white supremacist mythology and crusader ideology to demand stronger militaries to defend Western civilisation.

The renewed Western alliance will share their common civilisational identity, bound by “Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry”.

Ethno-chauvinistic beliefs about race, religion and culture are the new bases for solidarity and authority. ‘Defending Christians’ became the pretext for the US 2025 Christmas Day bombing of Nigeria.

Another Western century?

Rubio appealed for pan-European Western unity against multilateralism and other threats, calling for increased military spending and immigration controls.

He urged Europe to “take back control” of ‘Western’ industries and supply chains. After all, NATO allies have joined the US in seizing foreign assets at will.

Vassal-like and desperate for reassurance after a year of Trump’s blatant contempt and threats, the audience welcomed his speech with a standing ovation.

Fearing Washington might negotiate with Moscow over Ukraine without them, European leaders have intensified demands for all-out war against Russia.

Rubio is working to secure critical minerals supplies against “extortion from other powers”, including Europe, through opaque bilateral agreements secured with threats.

Trump 2.0 is making military threats for profit, including post-war ownership, mining and other rights. For many, NATO’s US-Europe divide is not over peace, but rather sharing Ukraine war costs and spoils.

While funding for European welfare states and other ‘social’ purposes continues to fall, military budgets continue to spike, as demanded by Trump.

Meanwhile, Merz has invoked military Keynesianism to justify Germany’s largest-ever military budget since the Cold War, aimed at strengthening NATO.

Ostensibly to strengthen national security, the Trump administration has cut social programmes. Instead, US military spending is being prioritised.

Meanwhile, the US Congress has shown support by approving a larger War Department budget than the Pentagon requested.

Armaments contracts have mainly benefited established companies, while the ‘tech bros’ increasingly supply newer weapons and related systems using artificial intelligence.

Following Trump, the European elites are strengthening their already powerful militaries and securing commercial deals for their own advantage, rather than defending the peaceful multilateral cooperation they once advocated.

This article is courtesy Inter Press Services.

https://www.ipsnews.net/2026/03/rubio-seduces-europe-with-imperial-nostalgia/

 

US-Israel War on Iran Will Reset Strategic Map of West Asia

Prabir Purkayastha | 13 Mar 2026

India’s foreign policy today is foundering on the hard rock of reality. The sooner the government owns up to this, the better it will be for the country.

US strikes on Tehran Feb 28. Photo: Mehr News

The war that the US and Israel launched on Iran on February 28, 2026, has entered its 13th day. With this war, the world is facing a rupture not only in oil and gas supplies from the region but also fertilisers, critical to agriculture. All these are vital for Asia, especially India, which is more reliant on West Asia/Middle East’s supplies for the bulk of its hydrocarbons—oil and gas—for energy and fertilisers.

Not surprisingly, the oil price has risen from $60-65 a barrel in February this year to $150 a few days ago, before Trump’s declaration that the Iran war may be winding down, and then dropped to $90. With Russian oil under US and EU sanctions, the price of oil may not return to the earlier $60-65 level before this war.

This will be an onerous burden on countries like India. India, reliant as it is on Russian oil supplies under US sanctions, may have to pay $20-25 more per barrel for its oil. We have got a US “clearance” to buy Russian oil for a month, but not beyond that.

The natural gas scenario remains even more critical, with the Indian government already restricting gas supply to restaurants and other commercial users. If the crisis persists, domestic consumers of gas, either LPG cylinders or piped gas, are also likely to be hit, as fertiliser and other industrial users are likely to be prioritised over them.

It is also clear that Iran’s resistance, particularly its drones and missiles, has created huge issues for not only Israel and the US, but also US allies in the region, the Arab countries that have provided it with military bases. Iran’s position is that if such US bases in Arab countries are used for launching missiles on Iran, then they are legitimate targets for Iran’s retaliation. Though the US media reports “victory” and Iran’s weakening missile strikes as evidence, Iran’s drone strikes appear to continue.

The US maintains THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence) radar and missile batteries in Israel, Jordan, Qatar, the UAE (two batteries), and Saudi Arabia. These systems consist of the AN/TPY-2 radar — the X-band surveillance array—the core of the THAAD system. Without it, a THAAD battery cannot identify targets or direct antimissile interceptors. With the US-Israel losing the early warning THAAD systems in Qatar and other Gulf states, Israel’s Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and US anti-missile systems have lost their early warning tripwire.

A THAAD radar and anti-missile system is worth an estimated $1.1 billion, while the THAAD radar system itself costs a minimum of half a billion dollars. They are not only expensive but also take about eight years to manufacture. This is why the US has now shifted a THAAD system from South Korea to West Asia, even against the wishes of the South Korean government.

According to military analysts, with the loss of the THAAD early warning system, the time for Israel and US defences to react to drone and missile attacks has dropped from 10-15 minutes to about 1- 2 minutes. Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and Pentagon advisor Theodore Postol, in a YouTube video, also shows how most of Israel’s anti-missiles are failing now to stop even the relatively slow-moving drones, allowing Iran to launch a lesser number of missiles to score the same number of hits.

According to experts, Iran can continue to fire its relatively low-cost missiles and drones for a long time. Iran has also moved its drone manufacturing underground, and therefore, is relatively impervious to Israel’s and the US's missiles and bombs. Its drone production at relatively low rates can therefore continue for a long time.

Iran, of course, has taken a huge battering from Israel and US missiles and bombings. The amount of punishment Israel has taken, however, is not public. Haifa refinery appears to have been heavily damaged, as have Israel’s missile launchers. What is critical to Iran in this war is not how much damage it can inflict on Israel, but the strategic impact of its closing the Straits of Hormuz will have on the world, particularly its NATO allies in Western Europe, who, along with the US, have been the major enablers of the Zionist regime. The question for the axis of resistance, and that includes Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Houthis in Yemen, is how long can they paralyse the oil shipments through the Straits of Hormuz and the Red Sea?

If this war continues, not only Asia, including India, will pay a high price, but also Europe, which has already burned their bridges with Russia. Iran is fully aware that its strength lies in its ability to continue fighting and to create conditions in which countries like India, Southeast Asia, and Europe will face the consequences of rising oil prices, as well as its availability. Will such countries then turn on the ex-colonial and settler colonial powers, who still aim to control the world? How long will these countries tolerate the US leveraging its destructive ability to literally blackmail any country it wants and extort whatever it needs from the world? From a supposed Rule-Based International Order to the current one based on the law of the jungle, with the US as its top predator?

There is no question that Iran and its people are paying a huge price for defying the global hegemon, even if the US is a much weaker force today than in its heyday post-World War 2. Though its economy is still the largest in the world, the collective West’s economy, even after including that of its NATO allies in Europe and Asian allies like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, no longer dominates the world as it once did.

China, India, Southeast Asia, and Latin America have industrialised, and in terms of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), the BRICS 5 have now overtaken the G7 countries. The US resorting to war is not a demonstration of its strength in West Asia but a recognition that the only area where the US is still stronger than others is in its military capability: its war budget—the US has officially renamed its Defence Department as War Department—is equal to that of the next nine countries put together.

Post World War 2, the US has attacked 30 countries, a record no other country can even come close to. Its “success” lies in convincing its citizens that the US responds only when attacked or when in imminent danger of being attacked. Remember Saddam's weapons of mass destruction? Against Korea, in which US troops bombed North Korea back to the Stone Age and installed its puppet Syngman Rhee in South Korea? Or the US war against Vietnam on the argument that SE Asian countries would otherwise fall to the “Reds” like dominoes? Its toppling of Chile’s democratically elected government and the installation of a brutal military dictatorship under Pinochet? The US war against Serbia? The Bay of Pigs attack on Cuba after Fidel Castro overthrew the brutal dictatorship of Batista? Overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya? Or the war against Iran earlier and now again? The recent US attack on Venezuela?

For many of these US military interventions, the US did not simply overthrow its existing governments, replacing them with a new one. In a number of these countries, it left behind failed states like Iraq and a permanent problem for its neighbours. The Libyan case is particularly important, as it has been a source of instability not only in the Arab world but also in North Africa. The US war motto has been either you surrender to us and become a neocolony, or we will destroy you completely.

The US, Israel and its allies in the region believed that minorities—Kurds and Baluchis—could be incited into revolts against the Iranian central government, controlled as it is by a theocracy. Yes, a number of Iranians do not like the current rule that straitjackets people, insists on retrograde dress codes and privileges the religious figures. But the Kurds are fully aware that this is a game that the Western powers have played time and again with them, promising statehood and then pulling the rug later after the West achieved its war goals. The most recent example is Syria, but this is also what happened earlier in Iraq. It does not appear that the Kurds are falling into the US trap once again. Yes, they have their grievances against the Iranian government, but aligning with Israel to destroy Iran is not their objective.

The war between Iran and the US-Israel will continue unless Trump, who started this war, backs off. He can declare victory, of having taught Iran and its allies a lesson, destroying their cities and oil infrastructure, even if he has been unable to stop the flow of missiles striking Israel. In his press conference on March 10, Trump talked about the War ending very soon, after dubbing the past 10 days of war, which has wrought devastation on Iran, a “short-term excursion”.

Again, we cannot take Trump’s statements seriously unless they are matched by action. He has also accepted that the missile strike on the girls' school, which killed 170 girls and injured many more, was indeed a US Tomahawk missile and not an inaccurate Iranian missile, as he had claimed earlier.

Unfortunately for Iran, world opinion means very little for the US or Israel in this war. Israel is now fully committed to a Zionist state in which Palestinians will not only have no rights but can only survive by becoming refugees in neighbouring Arab lands. Zionists in Israel, backed by Christian Zionists like Mark Huckabee, the US Ambassador to Israel, have also declared Israel’s “Biblical right” to occupy lands from the Nile to the Euphrates. As long as the settler colonial and ex-colonial states—the US and its European allies—provide weapons, money and political cover to Israel, the problem of West Asia, or the Middle East as the settler colonial and ex-colonial powers like to call the region, will continue.

Palestine is a global issue and a part of decolonising the world. Iran's closing of the Straits of Hormuz has shown how interconnected the world is, and ghettoising West Asia will not work. And let us not forget, it is not just oil and natural gas we need from the region. The expatriate Indian workers provide a significant share of our hard-currency inflows, which are also at risk if West Asia implodes.

Pretending a new policy of “multiple alignments”, instead of India’s original foreign policy based on non-alignment, does not work. India’s foreign policy today is foundering on the hard rock of reality. The sooner the government owns up to this, the better it will be for all of us. Yes, we are in a multipolar world. But neocolonialism is very much alive. We cannot, as a nation, forget our colonial past and our history of resistance that led to a free India.

As an American philosopher had said: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Let us not fall into the US trap and court neocolonialism in the garb of multiple alignments. Instead, we need to return to our belief in a world where every country has a right to develop its future free from ex-colonial and neocolonial hegemons.

This is the right that Iran is exercising. It does not have to defeat Israel and the US. For Iran, it is an existential question: as long as it exists, it wins. That is what the current Iran war is about and why it will remake the strategic map of West Asia.

Imperialism’s Attack on Third World Sovereignty

Prabhat Patnaik | 14 Mar 2026

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Amid the US-Israel attack on Iran, Marco Rubio articulated re-colonialisation as an imperial strategy and revival of the glory of ‘Western Civilisation’.

Impact of Israeli attacks on Iran. Photo: Tasnim News Agency

The very concept of sovereignty of Third World nations is now being sought to be abolished by imperialism in violation of all canons of international law, as is evident from the bombing of Iran by the US and Israel with the explicit objective of effecting a “regime change”. Until now, even when the obvious objective had been to change a regime that had become uncongenial for imperialism, the proffered official reason advanced for imperialist military intervention had been camouflaged under some other excuse, such as the regime possessing “weapons of mass destruction”, or the regime being engaged in narcotics trade, or something else.

Now, in the case of Iran, any such fig-leaf has been dropped; the bombing has been undertaken even as talks on Iran’s nuclear programme, the ostensible issue of contention, were going on, and reportedly even making progress. By its action, therefore, the US has now arrogated to itself, for the first time since the end of the colonial era, the right to effect a “regime change” wherever it likes within the Third World.

The point here is not whether the Islamic Republic enjoyed mass support among the Iranian people, or whether it was repressive, or whether it allowed free speech, or whether it tolerated an opposition; the point is that it is the people of Iran who alone have to right to decide on any “regime change” in their country and to work for it. It is not the job of US imperialism, which has no business to intervene militarily in the affairs of another country. That is what the sovereignty of a country implies, and that sovereignty is what anti-colonial struggles had achieved for their respective countries all over the Third World in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Imperialism, which until now had been engaged in undermining that sovereignty through diverse backdoor manoeuvres, has now resorted to open military intervention for doing so. This constitutes a direct attack upon national sovereignty, and therefore opens up an altogether new chapter in history, paving the way for an effective reversal of decolonisation.

Two questions immediately arise: how does imperialism feel emboldened to undertake such an attack? And why does it especially feel the need for doing so at the present juncture?

Read Also: US-India Trade Deal: A Colonial Era-Like Unequal Treaty

The answer to the first question is simple: the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War has left it in a position where it does not feel as constrained as it did earlier. In Cuba, for instance, where imperialism is also talking of “regime change” now, the contrast with the situation at the time of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, is absolutely striking.

At that time the Soviet Union had asked its ships heading for Cuba to shoot their way through the American blockade of the island, thereby risking a possible nuclear war; and the US had been forced to compromise to avoid such an eventuality. One result of this had been the absence since then of any direct imperialist military intervention in Cuba; that kind of constraint on imperialism no longer exists. It, of course, has not existed for quite some time, but imperialism, as I argue below, is currently skating on the thinnest possible ice, which impels it to attempt to recolonise the Third World. And that is the answer to the second question raised above.

The nature of its current crisis can be understood properly if we keep in mind that it has two distinct components. The first is that over the past three or four decades, the share in the national income of workers in the advanced capitalist countries, and of the working people in the Third World countries, has undergone a drastic decline. And since consumption out of a unit of the economic surplus is lower than that out of a unit of workers’, or working people’s, income, this redistribution towards economic surplus, gives rise to a tendency toward over-production relative to aggregate demand, and hence to an increase in unemployment (which may, of course, be camouflaged, as in the case of the US, as a decline in work participation rate). This entails a sharp increase in the distress of the toiling people.

The second component contributing to the present crisis of imperialism is that, unlike in the heyday of colonialism prior to the First World War, the leading imperialist power of today lacks the ability to meet its balance of payments deficit through the imposition of a “drain of surplus” or of “deindustrialisation” on a colonial empire. The leading imperialist country at all times, it must be remembered, invariably runs a balance of payments deficit; in the present case an important reason for the deficit is the US running a string of over 750 military bases in 80-odd countries of the world to maintain its global dominance. This deficit in the period before the First World War was covered by the leading imperialist power of that time, Britain, at the expense of its colonies.

The absence of a colonial empire of its own has meant that the current leading power, the US, has been meeting its deficit by printing dollars. It is today the world’s most indebted country by far, and the world is awash with dollars or dollar-denominated assets that constitute American liabilities. This poses a massive threat to the stability of the capitalist world’s financial system.

It is often suggested that since there is no other currency as frequently used as the dollar, the latter faces no credible threat. But this is erroneous: even if there is no credible threat from any other currency, a sudden shift from the dollar to commodities is always on the cards, and, if this happens even for a while, it could well cause a massive inflation in the capitalist world.

This is exactly what had happened in the early 1970s and had formed the background to the rise of Thatcherism and Reaganomics that had created huge unemployment in their respective countries to combat inflation. But that imposition on the workers had come in a situation where they had experienced a significant post-war boom, while any repetition of such a situation in the present context, coming on top of acute workers’ distress, for reasons discussed above, would greatly upset the social stability of the system.

The response of imperialism in this conjuncture to pre-empt such a threat has two parts: one is the installation of a neo-fascist regime in the form of the Donald Trump administration in the US (and similar regimes or similar imminent regimes elsewhere).

The other is an attempt to reinstate colonial-style domination around the world by instituting obedient regimes. The criminal abduction of Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, and the attack on Iran where a progeny of the Pahlavi dynasty is waiting in the wings to take power, courtesy the Americans, are examples of such re-colonialisation.

Both Venezuela and Iran are oil-rich countries, with the former possessing the largest oil reserves in the world; and the capturing of their reserves by American companies would open the way for another round of “drain of surplus”, this time towards the US, that would ease America’s payments problems.

Re-colonialisation, however, is not confined to extracting a “drain” from oil-rich countries; it also takes the form of seeking to impose “unequal treaties”, such as the Indo-US Trade Treaty, which create captive markets for American goods, as in colonial times. Of course, with this effort at re-colonialisation, whether imperialism would succeed in overcoming its present crisis is beside the point; it believes that re-colonialisation constitutes a way out of the crisis, and that is what matters.

Re-colonialisation as an imperial strategy was sold by the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to a group of initially-sceptical European leaders recently. He, of course, put it in a different language but his suggestion was as direct as possible. His argument was that the glorious ‘Western Civilisation’ had in recent years suffered a setback because of the rise of communism and of the anti-colonial movements that communism supported; this setback had to be reversed. This obviously meant a reversal of the gains of the anti-colonial struggles, that is, a re-colonisation of the world.

A revival of the glory of ‘Western Civilisation’ in short depended, according to Rubio upon a re-colonialisation of the world. A more direct call for subjugating the Third World to imperialist control is difficult to imagine.

Rubio’s argument, according to news reports, proved persuasive for the initially-sceptical European leaders. Not surprisingly, there has been no major opposition from Europe, other than by Spain, to the latest US-Israeli atrocity inflicted on Iran. It would appear, therefore, that we are on the threshold of witnessing a concerted drive by all imperialist countries to reverse the gains of decolonisation.

Prabhat Patnaik is Professor Emeritus, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The views are personal.

 

Saturation Warfare and Western Defence Paradox

Zahid Sultan | 13 Mar 2026

Iran has demonstrated that technologically superior militaries remain vulnerable to well-designed asymmetric strategies.

For much of the post-Cold War era, Western military power has been wrapped in an aura of technological invincibility. Precision-guided munitions, stealth aircraft, satellite surveillance, and multilayered missile-defence systems created the impression that advanced militaries--particularly the United States and its close allies -- had largely solved the problem of vulnerability from the air. Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Balkans reinforced this perception. The West appeared capable of projecting force with devastating precision while shielding its own territory and infrastructure from meaningful retaliation.

Yet the strategic landscape is beginning to look more complicated. Iran, a country with neither the financial resources nor the technological depth of the US or Israel, has spent the past two decades quietly developing a military doctrine designed not to defeat Western power directly but to expose its limits. Through a combination of missile forces, drone warfare, and saturation tactics, Tehran is steadily chipping away at the perception that Western defensive systems provide an impermeable shield.

This development matters less because of the physical damage Iranian strikes may cause and more because of what it reveals about the evolving balance between offence and defence in modern warfare. Military technology can reduce vulnerability, but it rarely eliminates it.

The Western approach to air and missile defence rests on a layered architecture. Radar systems detect incoming threats, command networks calculate trajectories, and interceptor missiles are launched to destroy hostile projectiles before they reach their targets. Systems, such as Patriot and other advanced interceptors, form part of a defensive ecosystem designed to create overlapping layers of protection. In theory, this architecture allows defenders to neutralise most aerial threats before they inflict damage.

In practice, however, these systems operate under constraints that are both technical and economic.

The first constraint is mathematical. Every incoming missile, drone, or rocket must be intercepted individually. Detection systems must track it, command networks must assign an interceptor, and defensive missiles must be launched within seconds. When the number of incoming projectiles remains limited, such systems perform effectively. But as the scale of an attack increases, the burden on the defensive network multiplies rapidly.

Iran has recognised this vulnerability and built its military doctrine around exploiting it.

Rather than relying exclusively on a small number of advanced weapons, Tehran has invested in large inventories of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. Many of these systems are relatively inexpensive compared with the high-end interceptor missiles used by Western defence networks. Their strategic value lies in their quantity rather than their individual sophistication.

The objective is not necessarily to overwhelm defensive systems completely. Instead, the goal is to create saturation conditions- situations in which the defender must simultaneously track and intercept large numbers of incoming threats. Under such conditions, even highly capable defensive systems begin to strain. Radar systems must manage dozens of targets, command networks must prioritise which projectiles to intercept first, and interceptor inventories are rapidly depleted.

Even a system with a high interception rate cannot guarantee perfect protection. If a defensive network stops 90% of incoming missiles, 10% still penetrate the shield. In a small exchange, that residual number may be insignificant. But in large-scale missile salvos, even a small penetration rate can produce meaningful strategic effects.

Iran’s strategy also exploits the economic asymmetry embedded in missile defence. Interceptor missiles are extraordinarily expensive. A single launch may cost millions of dollars, reflecting the advanced sensors, propulsion systems, and guidance technology required to destroy a target traveling at high speed.

By contrast, many Iranian drones and short-range missiles are comparatively cheap to produce. This disparity creates a troubling economic logic for the defender. Shooting down inexpensive drones with costly interceptor missiles may be tactically successful, but it imposes a financial burden that is difficult to sustain in prolonged engagements.

The result is a form of economic warfare in which the attacker forces the defender to spend vastly more resources simply to maintain defensive stability.

Iran has further refined this approach by combining different types of aerial threats in coordinated attacks. Ballistic missiles descend from high altitudes at extraordinary speeds. Cruise missiles travel at low altitudes, making them harder to detect on radar. Drones move slowly but can be deployed in large swarms, forcing defensive systems to engage multiple targets simultaneously.

These mixed attack patterns complicate the defender’s task considerably. Air-defence systems must deal with threats operating at different speeds, altitudes, and trajectories. The more complex the attack becomes, the greater the probability that some projectiles evade interception.

What Iran has demonstrated is not that Western defensive systems are ineffective. On the contrary, they remain among the most sophisticated military technologies ever developed. But their effectiveness has limits, and those limits become visible when they are confronted with large-scale, coordinated attacks.

The strategic implications extend beyond the immediate military balance. For decades, the credibility of Western military power has rested partly on the belief that technological superiority could guarantee overwhelming battlefield dominance. States contemplating confrontation with Western powers often assumed that their own capabilities would be neutralised quickly and decisively.

Iran’s approach challenges that assumption. By showing that missiles and drones can occasionally penetrate even advanced defensive systems, Tehran introduces an element of uncertainty into the strategic equation. It demonstrates that technologically superior militaries remain vulnerable to well-designed asymmetric strategies.

This does not mean that Iran has fundamentally altered the global balance of power. Western militaries still possess overwhelming advantages in air power, intelligence, and precision strike capabilities. The US and its allies retain the ability to project force on a scale that Iran cannot match.

Nevertheless, the Iranian strategy underscores a recurring pattern in military history. When dominant powers develop advanced defensive technologies, weaker adversaries respond by seeking methods to bypass, saturate, or circumvent those defences. The contest between offence and defence is rarely settled permanently.

In this sense, Iran’s missile and drone programmes represent a strategic adaptation rather than a revolutionary breakthrough. They exploit vulnerabilities inherent in even the most sophisticated defence systems.

The broader lesson is straightforward. Technology can shift the balance of power, but it rarely abolishes the fundamental uncertainties of warfare. Defensive systems may reduce the damage inflicted by an adversary, but these cannot eliminate the threat entirely.

The West’s military shield remains formidable. Yet Iran’s strategy serves as a reminder that no shield is ever perfect and that the perception of invincibility is often more fragile than the technology that sustains it.

The writer is a Kashmir-based independent researcher. The views are personal. Email: Zahidcuk36@gmail.com